


Excerpts From a Waking Dream

by NicoleAnell



Category: Alias
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2004-01-13
Updated: 2004-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post-season two Will/Vaughn fic. It was originally supposed to veer toward slash, but it ended up gen and canon-y.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_You dream there are flowers in the hospital room. You're sure there would be flowers if anyone knew where you were. The people you worked with, neighbors, your parents -- if they were_ told_ that you were knifed in the gut and left in a burning apartment, there would be a few bouquets. You dream that there are flowers and cards, like the ones you got in rehab, only this time your sister isn't calling to ask what was going on in your goddamn head._

You get cards that say:

Get Well Soon So You Can Return To Your Life Of Misery!

Hang In There, Kiddo, They Might Not Come Back To Kill You!

Here's Hoping You Learn and Grow From This Experience, Rather Than Lapsing Back Into That Fake Drug Habit!

You dream that you are putting the cards away to write a cover story, and you have to put the facts in order again and again. Fact #1 is that the apartment is gone. You are technically homeless, and soon you will be cast into the streets, until Sydney comes back in a few days and finds a new place with you. You will paint the walls together. You might kiss. She'll tell you about her thrilling adventures in vanishing, and you'll tell her about your exciting scar and all the lovely flowers and cards your friends sent for you. This is all speculation, but it will work in print. When everything settles down, you can both laugh about it and move on to exploring Fact #2.

Fact #2 is that Francie was not Francie, that you never slept with Francie, that you never dated Francie, that you were taken advantage of by an evil doppelganger. The subheadline of Fact #2 has to do with what a boob you are, what a complete schmuck, what a horrible, horrible friend who couldn't tell the difference. In researching Fact #2, you interview Francie, direct from the afterlife, who hates your guts and thinks you deserve to be dead instead of her. But she quickly takes it back, and she is sorry, and she misses you so much, because she is kind and loving and innocent Francie in real life, and in your dream. She is Francie, ambassador to the Real World, where there were never any spies or guns or brainwashing. She ran a restaurant and got lied to by the people who loved her on a daily basis. You miss her too.

**************

Will lived in a hospital for two days after the incident. It was an actual local hospital, St. Augustine's, not anything covert. If there were any extra, secret security procedures going on over his blood loss and stitches, he didn't see them, but maybe that was the point. There was a television over his bed. There weren't any flowers.

Vaughn came to see him on the second day. He didn't have news about Sydney being lost -- Sydney was lost in those days, because everyone knew there was a body, but everyone decided that it was not hers. Vaughn had dropped her off, something had happened, and now she was lost. Vaughn didn't have any news about that, he just "thought I'd check how you were doing."

"Better," said Will. "I think I'm... okay, considering everything." He glanced around the room. "I'm not really bed-ridden or anything. I'm just sort of tired?" The last part unintentionally came out like a question, like asking permission to feel so wiped out.

Vaughn tried to smile. "I couldn't blame you."

"Hey, you know I already talked to someone at the Agency about what happened, right? I wrote a whole thing out for them again."

"Oh yeah, I know that." Some staff members walking past the doorway caught Vaughn's attention.

Will gave an amiable smile. "It's okay, I don't think anyone's watching." At second thought, he whipped his head toward the door looking nervous. "Why, is anyone watching?"

"No," Vaughn answered quickly. "You're fine."

Will looked into a pair of compassionate eyes and averted his gaze to the window, with its picturesque view of the other wing of the hospital. "You know, could you try not to...?"

"What?"

He sighed. "Don't look at me like that, Agent Vaughn."

Vaughn looked sincerely confused. "How?"

"You were looking at me like the missing link again. Like... if you pity me, it gets you closer to her or- I don't know... Everyone who knows Sydney came to visit me. There were probably even more who weren't allowed to, or they chickened out in the hallway." He choked out a laugh. "I don't know anything. They don't know anything. Except that there's no way she wouldn't come straight back here if-"

"I don't know if we should be talking about this," Vaughn said suddenly.

Will smiled a little again. "Well, because of the mysterious spy-nurses or because you don't want to?" Will made sure his voice was lowered enough, just in case of the first possibility. Vaughn frowned at him. "I'm just asking. And now I'm returning to my very silent recovery."

**************

_Sydney does come back, very often. Usually it's you who finds her. There's this park on her old campus, when she was in grad school, and that's where Sydney usually is, on a very warm, boring day in your sleep when no one else is there. You find her right under this one tree, a really funny tree she'd showed you once where all these people had carved their initials. You find Sydney carving on the tree, dates and telephone numbers and passwords, and you're glad you can tell her how much everyone worried._

You yell when you see her, because if you call her name loud enough, she'll turn. But she's never the same when she turns. You are seeing her for the first time in France, and she's wearing too much makeup like a singer, and her hair is too bright, and she's kicking ass like Wonder Woman, it's insane._ But it's still her, you know it is, so you call her name again. And when she's close enough to you, when everything else fades away and you see it's just Sydney from grad school, wearing long pajamas and a half-hearted ponytail, and she's staring at you through glass, you want to tell her secrets and bitch about people you know, but you can't._

She doesn't recognize your eyes.

**************

After the hospital, Will lived in a safe house a few days. Vaughn came to see him one of those days too, looking like he'd woken up at noon and hadn't eaten for hours. If Will had been paying attention to that, rather than turning on the coffee machine and cleaning some clutter off the chairs, his first words might have been different.

What he said was, "I'm a little weird about these places, you know?"

Vaughn said, "It looks nice," through a scratchy throat.

"Fortress of security that is a CIA safe house." Will tapped on a table. "Where the bad guys can never find you, except sometimes when they walk right in. Which really doesn't sound awful right now," he added. "I'm kind of nostalgic for last year."

"It's only temporary," Vaughn said.

"Right. So, what, you were on your way somewhere and wanted to check in on..." He looked closely at Vaughn for the first time since he'd come in. "Are you okay?"

He took a long pause. "No, I... wasn't going anywhere. I'm actually gonna take some time off soon."

Will's eyes widened with relief. "Oh! 'Cause you scared me with -- is this just how you look around your house?" He shook his head. "God, that wasn't supposed to sound like that. No, you've earned time off, I think. Could I do that too?"

Vaughn closed his eyes. "Will..."

Will talked faster, blocking out something deafening that was building in the room. "I think it's good, time off. Some rest while all of this gets settled, and when Sydney gets back, or you people locate her, however you do that kind of thing-"

"Will, they tested the other body from the fire."

Will lost his voice and possibly the air behind it. Vaughn's voice became soundbytes.

"...I thought someone should be here to tell you, someone that you know... I did this wrong. If you want to sit down..."

Part of Will's brain took his advice, and he sat on the floor, not sure if he was speaking out loud. "Was she... did- did she die _in_ the fire, like..."

_Like you could've pulled her out while you were saving your own ass, you idiot._

"...And they've recommended that you go into Witness Protection-"

"Wait, what?" He was sure those words were actually spoken.

"You have a good chance of not being followed. It might be safer for you."

Will swallowed. "So, do they maybe teach this in field training? Not getting, um- not getting emotional or- or did you have..." he made a vague gesture toward himself, "you had all this already, so you don't see a problem taking one breath between 'Sydney's dead' and 'guess who's getting a name change.'"

"I'm sorry," Vaughn said honestly.

"I guess it's okay if my life gets fucked in one week, because I can just start over and-"

"Will, you are not alone."

"No, not 'til you ship me off to Montana to raise cattle and not contact my family anymore!"

Vaughn's voice raised suddenly. "This is voluntary! No one can force you into Witness Protection. I'm telling you there are professionals who believe you could die if you stay here, and there are some of us who don't want that to happen next."

Will's head hit his knees.


	2. Chapter 2

_She took something from you, that girl. Allison-Doren-who-wasn't-Francie. She was stronger than you, ruthless, and you weren't smart enough, and all that time she was just a little girl. She was a little girl in a photograph who did nothing but answer a couple of questions correctly on some standardized test in 1982. She's a little girl in your dreams, or Francie with a dark expression you never noticed, and she's taken something from you, and she smiles._

You don't really notice, that's the worst part. You just sit around, watch TV, go to work. Everything is fine, like a blissfully real dream, until you find yourself staring out a window and losing sight of your mother's maiden name. And then it hits you, how small you are, smaller than your own life now. All those years and months, and there isn't a single thing you can focus on, and the more you try, the more you think, it only gets harder. And god knows you can't reverse it, because this is so much bigger than you, the memories, the doctors, the CIA, the little girl.

But you wake up, you do wake up in this safe house with gray bedsheets and a mini-bar. You do sit up and breathe. And when your eyes are open, you do remember the flavor of the ice cream in Sydney's mouth, and the pain is a comfort after all this. You can wrap yourself in it, because it's yours, it comes from your memories, and they're all you have.

\-------------------

There was alcohol the next time Vaughn visited. It was just a given, and Will didn't question it. In fact, two hours later, neither of them remembered whose idea it was. Vaughn had it with him, a couple of cases of Italian beer, but Will might have been the one to bring it up. I've got a mini-bar/I'll go one better. That wasn't the point that mattered. And the point wasn't the liquor either, exactly, more like the act of charity. There was a silent admission in it, and that made their brains a little lighter more than anything. Two hours later, they were starting to settle into a kinder mood, surely making way for teary confessions of friendship and love-

"Can you drive, man?" Will asked suddenly.

Vaughn smiled slightly. "Are you kicking me out?"

"No. No, I was-- you are very insecure. Did you know-?" He watched Vaughn's eyebrows furrow. "I asked if you can you drive."

"Right now, you wanna go somewhere?" Will shook his head. "Like, hypothetically?"

"Hypothetic, yes. You have seven hypothetical beers and you walk outside, put the key in your car-"

"No, I don't think so."

"That's all I was looking for."

"Why?"

"I wasn't sure how you were gonna get home-"

"Oh, okay. Don't worry."

"Okay." And he listened.

Drinking alone, grieving, passing out -- that would be an illness. Neither of them could deal with that, falling on some lame-ass alcoholic crutch that would sting more as soon as they got sober. Drinking with another person, that's a party. That's the great male bonding of history and literature. That's what Vaughn would be doing with Weiss if he wasn't off in some meeting discussing their futures with the agency.

Will leaned forward in his chair, a mistake he quickly felt in what was quickly becoming a scar in his middle. "I really never liked you very much," he announced. "But I did like you. Tha-- that's the part I didn't like."

"I'm sorry," Vaughn said with far too much sincerity.

"You just- you... you were all... I was never a crazy conspiracy guy-"

"Of course you weren't," Vaughn said with less sincerity.

"But still, you never- you never really screamed CIA to me, you know?"

He managed to smirk. "Well, we try not to scream that. It's bad for undercover work."

"You were just all friendly and charming. But not in a creepy-charming way, like the government in movies where they're trying to control you? You were like a regular guy. It was very unsettling. I thought it would be different." Vaughn nodded. "And Sydney liked you," he continued. "And that just- sucked. Because you weren't the evil CIA professional conspirator... something, you were the guy from work. Like, you could've worked at a post office or something."

"The money wouldn't be as good."

"Why, how much do you make?" Will lost his train of thought, frowning. "And how much do I make now, by the way? Do they take care of that or-- but what was I-- I just really didn't like you, you know?"

"You said that."

"Because she should've been too good for you. I had the right to say, 'She's too good for him.' It's the right of the jealous best friend. And then, it turns out--" Will raised his arm in a loss for words. "You're good. You're just good. There's not a big flaw. You love her, and she's- she's happy..." his voice wavered, a clarity moment of sinking in. That one word _love_ and Vaughn was still smiling, staring through Will, staring through the room, not there. Will was leaning back to keep from upsetting his scar, smelling beer gone warm, talking about Sydney. It wasn't silence, because they could hear the room settling and watch everything blur and focus again. It wasn't an illness, because there was company.

Will cleared his throat, and Vaughn clicked back in. "She's all happy, and then it becomes my _obligation_ to like you. It's the duty of the grateful best friend."

"But you relinquish that duty."

"Yes I do. On principle. You say 'relinquish' when you're drunk? You're very good."

"You know, I didn't know what to think about you. I thought you were very hard-working, loyal, and you know, sometimes I would be standing there wondering if you ever slept with Sydney."

"Well, you can probably stop now."

"I couldn't ask her. I mean, there were conversations based around me trying to ask her-"

Will switched into a deep-sounding voice. "So, how about that you and Will?"

"How did you meet? Are you two involved in a way?"

"Involved in a no-pants setting, for example?"

Vaughn cracked another bottle open. "You know, I read your report when you first got into this. I read the whole thing. And part of me just kept thinking, 'God, here is a guy who seems to have all these options. On every page. A choice, and he-" Vaughn laughed, something he was sure he hadn't done in weeks. "He keeps making the worst one possible."

"I am not a bright man."

"No, that's not what I... You know you are. I mean, either that or just-- Jack Bristow scares the shit out of me, you know that? I trust him, but-- very last person I ever want to talk to, and you went off, thinking he's a potential killer, talking to him, going on a mission together, and why?"

"I am brave and complex." Will raised his glass as if toasting. "The cows of Montana will be in awe."

Vaughn threw his head back. "They're not sending you to Montana!"

He kept his glass up. "The cows will hear of me by my reputation."


End file.
